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Topic: Nuc Full/Medium Frame Integration (Read 1324 times)

I'm looking to acquire bees for my hives this spring. One thing I've found is that Nuc's are typically available in full size frames.I've chosen to use medium depth frames/supers.

What are some ways to integrate full frame Nuc's into medium depth supers/frames?

One way might be to cut the cone from the full frames and band into the medium. This would damage brood and the frame area not an even 1 to 2 split.

Another thought is brush the queen/cluster into a bottom medium super with foundation. Install a queen excluder to keep the queen in the super and place the brood above to allow them to hatch out and integrate into the hive.

A last thought (least desirable to me) would be to permanently shim medium super and move to a full frame brood chamber.

Why the Hate towards deeps? You will do more harm with the first two methods. If you install in a deep you can super with mediums. Then in the early spring/late winter when the cluster in in the top box you can remove the deep. This way you get them installed painlessly and the deep is just temporarily in your management plan.

Cutting out and damaging comb containing brood is unneccessarily hard on a precious commodity. Just put five frames on foundation or your drawn drawn medium combs on one side of a med box. Place another medium box on top and place your deep frames on the open side and fill the remainder in the top box with medium frames. As the bees expand toward the center the outside deep will see all the brood emerge. Remove it, and slide the next deep frame with brood to the outside and fill in both stories with medium frames. You will soon be done with those deep frames.

If you have laid them on the top bars and let them be robbed out, you will have empty deep frames that you can run thru a tablesaw, nail on a bottom bar and have another drawn medium comb.

For my part I don't hate deeps. I want to go to mediums simply for standardization of equipment. Also, to reduce the weight of the equipment that I have to lift.You could put the five deep frames in a deep nuc box then super with medium boc

Its an easy process really. I bought a couple DEEP 6 frame NUCs last year (I use all mediums). I simply placed the 6 DEEP NUC frames inside 2 medium supers WITH A DUMMY BOX BELOW them to prevent extended comb. This was surrounded by the standard medium frames throughout the 2 mediums. By late Spring/early summer the DEEPS had mostly hatched out and were replaced, (removing the dummy boxes) with mediums. Pretty easy, just have to think about it a bit.

Thanks for the replies.I'll probably use the double stacked medium supers. Seems the least intrusive of the options. As the double stack medium is a little deeper than a full. I was a little worried about the bees drawing/burring on the bottom of the full frames. But thats probably of little concern as the full frames will be worked out of the space.

If that's the plan then don't set yourself up for a broken heart when you discover all that filled brood comb hanging off the bottoms of your DEEP frames. What will you do then? You'll need to carefully cut it off and wire it into another frame. Sounds like fun, NOT ;)

Why would you want to bother with that?

Just build "dummy" boxes placed below the DEEPS to fill the empty space. Its easier than letting them build comb and 'fill it w/ brood' that will be a pain to deal with later, for you and your bees.

A DEEP frame with bees is enough to handle. Why add another 6" of comb to it by leaving a void for your bees to fill? BEES HATE VOIDS :)

Just saying :-D.

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